Cocktail Party Tip: How to Batch Drinks

If you’re having a cocktail party, it is possible to make your drinks ahead of time for a large number of guests. The pros call it “batching,” which really just means making a larger number of drinks all at once to save yourself some time.

No matter what kind of cocktail you’re serving, the first step of batching is to take the recipe you’re going to make and multiply all the ingredient measurements by the number of drinks you’re making. So, if the recipe calls for 2 ounces of vodka and you’re serving 10 people, you will need 20 ounces of vodka.

If you want to save yourself from shaking every drink, you can serve a drink that doesn’t have fruit juice or muddled ingredients. This would be drinks like Martinis, Manhattans and Gibsons that combine various types of liquor and wine. What you’ll do is combine the ingredients and a 1 tablespoon of water for every drink in the batch and put them in the freezer. After an hour, they’ll be cold enough to serve.

For every other type of drink: Pour all the ingredients together into a glass pitcher. Muddled ingredients (like the mint in a mojito) should be muddled and kept in their own separate container and added to individual drinks as needed per serving. Similarly, sparkling ingredients (like the ginger ale in a Dark and Stormy) should be added to individual drinks before serving.

Once you’ve made your batch of cocktails, you still have to shake or stir each cocktail individually if it contains fruit juice so that it gets cold enough and has the right amount of water added to the drink.